Cultural heritage D-2-7145-0001 in Schönberg

The remains of Rammelsberg castle stand on a ridge south-west of Schönberg, overlooking the Mitternacher Ohe valley. A round tower stub and stretches of curtain wall mark the medieval core, while a ditch and rampart once enclosed the site on three sides. Medieval cellars and the ruins of a 17th-century brewery cellar survive beneath the slope. The castle began as a ministerial seat of the counts of Hals, first recorded in 1248 through Engelbert of Rehoviunsperg. By the 13th century local nobles such as the Buchbergers and Tengers held the Hofmark, before the Drexel family acquired it in 1721 through marriage. After a lightning strike in 1830 the estate was broken up, leaving only the later cellar complex and the legend of Maria Genoveva von Drexel, the ‘Wöcklin’, whose harsh rule inspired ghost stories still told today. Visitors walk past the tower stub and follow the old rampart line, where grass and brambles conceal the ditch. The brewery cellar’s arched entrance shows the site’s later use, while the valley view recalls Wening’s 1726 engraving of a compact three-storey building with corner and central towers. On quiet days the wind carries tales of the Wöcklin’s nocturnal flights and the heavy leaden coffin that suddenly lightened at her burial.